George Whitefield Chadwick

The Life and Music of the Pride of New England

Bill F. Faucett

Publication Year: 2012

In many ways, this is the story of the birth of the American style in classical music. George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931) was one of the most significant and influential American composers at the turn of the twentieth century and a leading light of the Boston cultural scene. Bill F. Faucett offers a detailed exploration of Chadwick's life and art utilizing archival material only recently made available. These crucial primary sources, including letters, diaries, and memoirs, enable a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Chadwick's music and aesthetic perspective, and provide a clearer lens through which to view his life, career, and times. The book traces Chadwick's story from his earliest musical education to his surging career in Boston's nascent musical culture of the 1880s, to his fruitful middle years, and finally to his later life and towering legacy. In addition to bringing newfound appreciation of Chadwick's life, Faucett's book offers penetrating examinations of his major compositions and a vivid re-creation of Boston's rich and influential musical and cultural scene.

This book will appeal to a broad audience of music lovers, scholars, and anyone interested in nineteenth-century American music and the Boston cultural scene.

Cover

Frontmatter

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

This book has relied on the goodwill and help of scores of people over a long
period of time. I would like to start by offering my sincerest thanks to the family
and heirs of George Whitefield Chadwick, especially Elsie Chadwick, Theodore
Chadwick Jr. (now deceased), Nancy Knight, Fitts family genealogist Sylvia Fitts...

Preface

Professor Douglass Seaton’s nineteenth-century music seminar at The Florida
State University encouraged my discovery of many composers and scores. But
of everything I listened to that semester, I was most taken by the compositions
of a little known, to me at least, American composer named George Whitefield...

Prologue: A Chadwick Sketch

Less than a year and a half before Chadwick’s death in 1931, the young conductor
and musical savant Nicolas Slonimsky wrote an article titled “Composers of
New England” for the then-influential periodical Modern Music. Assessing their
contribution to a national art, Slonimsky asserted that Chadwick...

1. “The Purest American Stock”: Chadwick’s New England Roots

George Whitefield Chadwick was born on November 13, 1854, the scion of
two venerable New England clans, the Chadwicks of the town of Boscawen and
the Fittses of the village of Candia, both situated in southeastern New Hampshire.
By and large these families comprised farmers...

By the time Chadwick was born, Lowell, Massachusetts, was already a thriving
industrial town. It was popularly known as “The City of Spindles” because
of its prominence in the American textile industry of the time, namely cotton
cloth...

3. Chadwick’s European Education (1877–1880)

Chadwick arrived in New York City on September 4, 1877, a day and a half
before his departure to Europe. This was his first visit to the city. While there he
attended a performance by Teresa Carreño, the legendary singer-turned-pianist,
at Madison Square Garden, where she enraptured her audience with a blazing...

4. Getting Started in Boston (1880–1882)

Chadwick re-entered Boston’s musical world with a perspective that was
vastly different from the one he possessed a few short years ago. Now a professional
with an enviable German conservatory imprimatur—although not a
diploma—he would spend the next several years busying himself with...

5. “That Fatal Facility”: Chadwick’s Boston (1880s)

The decade of the 1880s saw a number of impressive gains in Boston’s musical
life. Of course, musical life in “the Hub”—as Boston was nicknamed by Oliver
Wendell Holmes to reflect the position it claimed as the educational and cultural
center of the universe...

The 1890s have long held a special place in the popular imagination of
Americans. The decade has been variously termed the “Gay Nineties,” the
“Mauve Decade,” and the “Reckless Decade.” Mark Twain cynically called the
last quarter of the nineteenth century...

7. “A Hell of a Job for a Composer”: Taking Charge at New England Conservatory (1897)

By the 1890s, the situation at New England Conservatory was a mess. But,
then again, the situation at NEC had long been a mess. The conservatory was
founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjée (1834–1891), a genuine zealot for the cause
of music, although he himself was not a particularly remarkable musical talent...

8. Sketches in Americanism: Chadwick’s Instrumental Music (1890s)

Czech composer Antonín Dvorˇák was already over fifty years old when he
came to the United States in September of 1892. Hired by music lover and philanthropist
Jeannette Thurber (1850–1946) to provide leadership and to serve as
a figurehead for her National Conservatory...

9. Chadwick, Modernism, & the End of an Era: "Adonais to Cleopatra" (1899–1905)

Critic William Foster Apthorp thought that Chadwick’s Adonais Overture
was “the most modern in spirit of anything I know from his pen.”1 But it defied
easy and immediate comprehension. Beautiful and imaginative though it
is, Apthorp could not fully grasp it at first encounter...

10. “Our Great Pilgrimage”: Chadwick’s Grand Tour (1905–1906)

Chadwick yearned to return to Europe to accomplish some of the goals
that he failed to achieve during his ill-fated 1901 trip, perhaps because he felt
as though he was running out of time. His recent fiftieth birthday occasioned
a special tribute performance of several of his compositions and a reception at...

11. Thursday Evenings & the Sea (1906–1912)

Karl Muck’s term as the fifth conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
was announced in June 1906, during the final leg of Chadwick’s European
sojourn. This followed Higginson’s lamentable inability to come to terms with
Wilhelm Gericke earlier that year prior to his sudden and unexpected...

Chadwick’s forays into the world of stagecraft had very much been a hit-and-
miss proposition up to this time. Several of his previous works had been
disappointing; Pontius Pilate was left in the lurch, and Judith, a work that he
had reason to expect would be a sensation...

13. “We Live on Hope”: Chadwick’s Response to the Great War (1914–1919)

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the nephew of Emperor Franz
Joseph, leader of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was assassinated in Sarajevo
while carrying out duties as the Inspector General of his uncle’s army. That
event provided a pretext for what turned out to be the start...

14. “Altschüler” (1919–1930)

Chadwick had been a leader in music education almost since his career began,
and he found most of his efforts an uphill climb. While huge musical gains had
been made in Boston and elsewhere, he nevertheless was troubled by the inability
of serious music to reach a wide population outside...

Prologue: Chadwick’s Death & Legacy (1931)

Although gout had been a painful nemesis for decades, Chadwick’s heart
condition was more worrisome. In late 1930 and into the first months of 1931,
problems that had been of concern became severe. “Paderewski dinner and
concert,” he wrote in his diary on...

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